Premier League Pass faces first major test this weekend with Spurs game behind paywall

NBC Sports’ Premier League Pass faces its first major test this weekend when 50% of the EPL games will be on the paid streaming service including Sunday’s match between Tottenham and Burnley.

The first big test the service, which is part of NBC Sports Gold, will face is how many Spurs supporters in the United States will decide to pay for it ($50 per season) and how many will decide to stream it illegally through other means. Given that this past Sunday’s Spurs-Chelsea match averaged 814,000 viewers between NBCSN and Telemundo combined, many of the viewers would be ideal candidates for Premier League Pass.

NBC Sports hasn’t publicly shared the total number of Premier League Pass subscribers, but the network will be able to gauge the interest level in the subscription service based on this game. The match between Spurs and Burnley kicks off at 11am ET Sunday and isn’t available on television nor the NBC Sports App. Premier League Pass is the only legal way for soccer fans to watch the game. On television, NBC Sports will show the Arsenal game against Liverpool at the same time on NBCSN.

So far this season, Premier League Pass had three games exclusively available during the first weekend, followed by four games this past weekend and now five games this weekend.

Over the course of the season, there’ll be an average of 3.5 games on Premier League Pass each week. Supporters of some clubs may see more than 60% of their matches available exclusively via Premier League Pass.

Here’s the schedule for this weekend’s Premier League matches on US TV and streaming (all times Eastern):

About The Author

Publisher of World Soccer Talk, Christopher Harris founded the site in 2005. He has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian and several other publications. Plus he has made appearances on NPR, BBC World, CBC, BBC Five Live, talkSPORT and beIN SPORT.
Harris, who was born and raised in Wales, has lived in Florida since 1984, and supported Swansea City since 1979. Last but not least, he got engaged during half-time of a MLS game.

45 Comments

AnthonyAugust 22, 2017

It’s Burnley. The vast majority of Spurs fans will be watching Arsenal vs Liverpool and checking Twitter or ESPN.com for highlights as the Spurs game is on. If Spurs were playing an important game, it would have been on CNBC or something.

You’re correct, Tim. No Man City-Everton replay is available via either the NBC Sports App or NBC Sports Gold. The confusing thing is that after the first week of matches, Premier League Pass made replays available of every one of the 10 games. This week, all we have for replays are the games shown via NBC Sports Gold (the four games).

I had the impression after reading all the promotional literature that all matches would be available on demand. Sure seems like they should be. If $50 is not enough, fine, charge a little more. But because I’m a cable subscriber who took the bait and bought the premier league pass, I’m paying substantially more for substantially less.

We were told by Christopher that the Premier League will not allow all matches to be available for replay. By NBC choosing one that had been on NBCSN, at least some people got to DVR it (I didn’t because some of my HD cable channels were breaking up, including NBCSN, but my cable Internet was unaffected).

I have to say, not making the replay of a Monday afternoon game available is pretty bad on NBC’s part, considering all the people working during the game who may not have DVRs (which don’t work 100% of the time anyway).

Also, it would be nice if they could let us know ahead of time which games will be available for replay, but now I imagine I’m just being ridiculous.

Hi, Christopher. Sorry to dominate your comment section here, but you seem to be the lone voice in the wilderness writing about what I believe is evolving into a bait-and-switch scheme.

If you read the announcement above, you’ll see promises of:

– “access to a huge amount of extra shows around the Premier League, the like of which has never been available before in the U.S”

– “In addition, subscribers can access replays of matches, and a full suite of Premier League Productions and NBC Sports original content and studio shows, plus highlight clips”

– “NBC Sports Gold’s “Premier League Pass” will feature a preseason rundown of Premier League clubs’ summer activity, Premier League weekend fixture preview and review shows, an end-of-season recap show, plus series such as Netbusters, Premier League World, Classic Match and archive programming – much of which will be available for the first time ever in the United States”

My point is they promised a lot of stuff here, a very small fraction of which is happening. I’m most concerned about the on-demand replays, but there are other unfulfilled “campaign” promises as well.

Thanks for doing your bit to hold NBC accountable. Most of us really appreciate the way they cover the game, but this is definitely sub-optimal, if not outright dishonest.

You can always download the NBC Sports Gold app if you have a Roku or similar device without actually signing up just to see what offerings they have both live and for replay. That’s what I’ve been doing, just to see for now, without signing up. It hasn’t been the most inspiring selection of extras, I’ll say that much.

This is not about the $50, it is about the disgusting way NBC/Turner are trying to cheat people. It’s bad enough I am already paying insane money to DirecTV, I will NOT be paying these greedy corporations a dime more.

There’s a point when you say-enough is enough…Not a dime more to these greedy disgusting corporations.

I’m a Spurs supporter and I won’t be paying for this. If NBC offered a streaming option that carried ALL matches I’d happily shell out a substantial sum of money for it. But I won’t buy this half-assed money grab.

I support West Ham and it appears that many if not a majority of their matches will be on the Premier League Pass, so for me, as someone who cut the cord, this product makes sense. Especially if they continue the on demand feature of Premier League Pass games which enables me to enjoy my weekend outside and watch the game at a time of my choosing in the evening. So I think this offering makes sense for those without cable that support a team outside the the top 6 or 7 clubs (of which I would love the Hammers to be!) 14 or 15 games for $50 is reasonable for me. If I supported a “big” club, it would be a far different story to have to shell out for only 3 or 4 games.

NBCUniversal is leaving a lot money on the table by allowing NBC Sports Group to embargo West Ham United matches from Telemundo and Universo in order to keep those matches inside the Premier League Pass over-the-top package.

I tried watching the Tottenham-Burnley match on Roku and it did NOT work. When I clicked on the match it said “THIS EVENT IS A DIGITAL EXCLUSIVE! GET IN ON ALL THE ACTION BY WATCHING THE NBC SPORTS GOLD WEBSITE.”

So basically NO, IT IS NOT AVAILABLE VIA ROKU! I could only have watched the match on the computer!!!!!!

I paid $50 to see the match on my laptop, something I could’ve done for free via some stream!

Every few minutes my stream cut out saying “You’ve reached the maximum number of streams on this account.”
This was the absolute WORSE service I have EVER had to endure! Every 3 or 4 minutes the above came up on my screen and when I refreshed the game it went back to the beginning!
And I only had ONE stream on ONE computer.

Oh yeah, I’ve gotten that every week and that’s for the non-Gold games. And I know for sure it’s not my wife watching another stream! (If anything, it may have been that she turned on Netflix, but wait, now THAT’s causing problems?)

And of course if you’re watching a replay and in the second half, getting back to where it was cut off means sitting through like 10 minutes of commercials that you can’t fast-forward through.

I have the Premier League Pass and watch on my Roku. This morning about 15 mins before the start of the Spurs/Burnley match I click on the icon for the match in the list of games available on the Upcoming/Live screen and get a blue screen with a message saying something to the effect that “your content will begin shortly”. However it never did!

I had to back out and reclick that same icon on the Upcoming/Live screen and then it was already 2 mins into the match. I was under the impression that waiting on the blue screen would start automatically but that’s not the case, at least at my house on my Roku. Anyone else have this problem?

The video quality was a bit dodgy for the first 15 mins or so of the first half, then things cleared up and looked about the same as the matches I watch on my cable feed on NBCSN.